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Open-Source JavaScript frameworks to develop stunning, interface-rich web applications

Jul 23, 2009 User Interfaces  7 Comments

Writing web applications today is a tiresome and time consuming process. Browser quirks, maintenance of huge JavaScript and AJAX components may be real time black hole for many projects. Many JavaScript/AJAX frameworks eases this process by allowing developers to build and maintain complex front-end applications with just few function calls. I have listed here only several of them, free and probably most known, but there are definitely much more available on the market. I personally do not switch from one to another for every project and prefer to stick with jQuery, on my personal opinion, most robust and best supported Javascript framework out there. But I hope this my list will be helpful for those developers, who still looking the best one to work with.

jQuery UI(www.jQueryui.com)

jQuery UI provides a comprehensive set of core interaction plugins, UI widgets and visual effects that use a jQuery-style, event-driven architecture and a focus on web standards, accessiblity, flexible styling, and user-friendly design. Each component is built according to jQuery’s event-driven architecture and is themeable, making it easy for developers of any skill level to integrate and extend into their own code.

MooTools (www.mootools.net)

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows writing powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API. MooTools orignially split into Core and More parts and each of them can be split into smaller components that fits only specific needs of application.

LivePipe User Interface Components (livepipe.net)

LivePipe UI is a suite of widgets and controls built using the Prototype JavaScript Framework. Includes limited set of GUI controls which are ContextMenu, ProgressBar, Rating, ScrollBar, SelectMultiple, Selection, Tabs, TextArea, Window and some extras.

YUI – The Yahoo! User Interface library (developer.yahoo.com/yui/)

The YUI Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI project includes the YUI Library with pretty long list of functionality and controls and two build-time tools: YUI Compressor and YUI Doc. Download package includes product source files, complete documentation and long list of samples.

Ext-JS (extjs.com)

Ext JS is a cross-browser JavaScript library for building rich internet applications. This probably the best library for those, who likes web application to look like standard desktop application as it offers comprehensive list of controls, panes, grids, windows etc. All controls themable; it is quite easy to stylize an application. Latest version (3.0) greatly improves quality, performance and size of the framework. Available with both commercial and open-source licenses.

Dojo Toolkit (www.dojotoolkit.org)

The Dojo Toolkit is an open-source JavaScript framework for building UI-rich web applications. It supplies a solid set of tools for DOM manipulation, animations, charts , AJAX, events, internationalization (i18n) and accessibility (a11y). Dojo Base is a single, 26KB entity, however it is not so fast as it expected to be and even demos on dojo website have noticeable timespan before effects applied.

MochaUI (www.mochaui.com)

MochaUI is a web applications user interface library built on the Mootools JavaScript framework. MochaUI focused on providing highly functional window and layout controls and best suits for developing Web Applications, Web Desktops, Widgets, Standalone Windows and Modal Dialogs.

Script.aculo.us (script.aculo.us)

One of the oldest and best know Javascript UI Framework, built on Prototype, script.aculo.us provides easy-to-use, cross-browser user interface libraries including animation framework, drag and drop, Ajax controls, DOM utilities and unit testing. Script.aculo.us getting new life now with Scripty2 (www.scripty2.com), which is in an alpha-phase but promises to be even better then its ancestor.

Rico – JavaScript for Rich Internet Applications (www.openrico.org)

Another “friend” of Prototype, Rico is an open source JavaScript library for developing rich Internet applications (RIAs) that use Ajax. Rico includes following components: LiveGrid, Animation Effects, Behaviors, Styling, Drag and Drop and Ajax Support.

Cappuccino (www.cappuccino.org)

Cappuccino is an open source framework that makes it easy to build desktop-caliber applications that run in a web browser. Can’t add anything more here as website is beautiful but not much informative and I have never used it myself.

UIZE (www.uize.com)

UIZE is an open source, object oriented JavaScript framework. It supports widgets, AJAX, DOM, templates, and more. UIZE Website provides many examples that look good and can be used for most common tasks.

QooxDoo (www.qooxdoo.org)

Qooxdoo is a comprehensive and innovative Ajax application framework. Leveraging object-oriented JavaScript allows developers to build impressive cross-browser applications. No HTML, CSS nor DOM knowledge is needed. Qooxdoo includes a platform-independent development tool chain, GUI toolkit and client-server communication layer. It offers a set of widgets that are hardly distinguishable from elements of native desktop applications; full built-in support for keyboard navigation; focus, tab handling and drag & drop functionality.

Interactive Website Framework (sourceforge.net/projects/iwf/)

A framework for creating highly interactive websites using javascript, css, xml, and html. Includes a custom xml parser for highly readable javascript. Essentially, all the plumbing for making AJAX-based websites, with js-based GUI toolkit.

Jitsu – Rich Web Application Framework (www.jitsu.org/jitsu/)

Jitsi is a next generation user interface toolkit for building rich web applications. Jitsu contains an integrated set of tools to enable developers to build and deploy sophisticated user interfaces for web applications. These include an Xml markup language, page compiler, data binding engine, JavaScript runtime, control library, runtime inspector, animation engine, cross-platform library, Ajax, and back button support. Jitsu apps use DHTML and run in most modern web browsers.

IWebKit iPhone/iPod touch UI framework (www.iwebkit.net)

Iwebkit is the revolutionary kit used to create high quality iPhone and iPod touch websites in a few minutes and is based on an LGPL license.

BBC Glow JavaScript library (www.bbc.co.uk/glow/)

This may sounds weird but BBC recently announced JavaScript framework and the name of it is Glow! Glow is a JavaScript library which aims to make working with JavaScript and the DOM easier. It tries to do this by abstracting common tasks, hiding cross-browser issues, and providing a set of user interface widgets.

IT Mill Toolkit (www.itmill.com/itmill-toolkit/)

IT Mill Toolkit is an open-source framework, providing widgets and tools for the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Deliver web applications without worrying about incompatibilities of web browsers, DOM or JavaScript by using standard Java tools. Framework provides dozens of AJAX-enabled widgets for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that work with all major browsers.

Update:
IT Mill Toolkit is now Vaadin (www.vaadin.com)

Sigma Ajax UI builder (sourceforge.net/projects/ajaxuibuilder/)

Written in javascript and PHP, SigmaVisual is web based visual AJAX UI builder for professional developers. Developers save their time in building up prototype as well as real web applications. TreeBar, TreeGrid, Layout, Menu are supported.

Google Web Toolkit (code.google.com/webtoolkit/)

With Google Web Toolkit (GWT), you write your AJAX front-end in the Java programming language which GWT then cross-compiles into optimized JavaScript that automatically works across all major browsers. When you’re ready to deploy, GWT compiles your Java source code into optimized, standalone JavaScript files.

Echo Web Framework (echo.nextapp.com/site/)

Echo is an open-source framework for developing rich web applications. Echo behaves as a user interface toolkit – like Swing or Eclipse SWT. AJAX technology is employed to deliver a user experience to web clients that approaches that of desktop-based applications. Echo applications can be created entirely in server-side Java code using a component-oriented and event-driven API or as client-side applications written in JavaScript (Echo3 only).

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (www.asp.net)

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is an open-source project built on top of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX framework. It is a joint effort between Microsoft and the ASP.NET AJAX community that provides a powerful infrastructure to write reusable, customizable and extensible ASP.NET AJAX extenders and controls, as well as a rich array of controls that can be used out of the box to create an interactive Web experience.
The AJAX Control Toolkit contains more than 30 controls that enable you to easily create rich, interactive web pages.

These frameworks do not provide GUI controls but only a set of JavaScript function to manipulate DOM, HTML, asynchronous data transfers etc. Frameworks like these are basements for all fancy GUI stuff, if you serious about Javascript development you may want to learn them to understand the real magic.

jQuery JavaScript Framework (www.jquery.com)

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development.

Prototype JavaScript Framework (www.prototypejs.org)

Prototype is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications. Featuring a unique, easy-to-use toolkit for class-driven development and the nicest Ajax library around, Prototype is quickly becoming the codebase of choice for web application developers everywhere.

Archetype JavaScript Framework (www.archetypejs.org)

Archetype takes care of loading everything needed by your application, using a transitive dependency loading system, and starts it when everything needed is available.